4 ms·

Different people like different kinds of games and gameplay experiences. But most of the video games industry is oriented around violent, twitchy games and RPGs

Different people like different kinds of games and gameplay experiences. But most of the video games industry is oriented around violent, twitchy games and RPGs. I can sink hundreds of hours into Civilization, X-COM, or Minecraft—games of strategy and games of world-building—but for me computer RPGs are almost entirely inferior to tabletop RPGs, especially in the "open world" aspect. Shooters especially bore me: fast reflexes on a control pad are not something I particularly want to spend spend dozens or hundreds of hours developing. Then you see the YouTube comments of the people who deride everyone else for not sharing their commitment for some specific styles of twitchy games. Some gamers have developed a weird and toxic little cult around their lifestyle games. I think board games have grown so much because they have been able to attract people who are interested in different paradigms of play: cooperative games, for example, because it seems like so many people hate player conflict. Competition adds a whole layer of interest to most board games IMO, but the most important thing is just for people to have fun.

cableshaft 10y ago
Board games have really exploded with how they experiment with different concepts and mechanics over the past fifteen years, and they've been rewarded with greater and greater success. Board game publishers actually encourage innovation from game designers (...to a certain extent. They also like safer bets when available too), much more so than video game publishers, and Kickstarter exists to fund the ideas that game publishers don't go for. Kickstarter exists for video games too, but board games are succeeding on Kickstarter at a much higher rate than video games lately, in no small part because video games are funding development, for a game that may take a lot longer to develop and be impossible to complete with those funds. Even the darling Shovel Knight burned through all of its Kickstarter money 5 months before release and they all went broke just to get the game out the door. But board games are usually funding production of a completed design that's already priced out so they know how much it's going to cost them. There are over a thousand new board games that came out this year at Essen alone, only one of several major board game trade shows. That's tons of opportunities for new mechanics and experiences. They're even getting deeper in their storytelling capabilities, as evidenced by the games Pandemic Legacy, Time Stories, and Above and Below. Board games are still defining new genres even (most recently the Legacy genre which is only 5 years old, and Deckbuilders which is only 8 years old), I can't think of any new genres in video games since Grand Theft Auto 3 came out and popularized sandbox games 15 years ago. That is, unless you count 'Free 2 Play, Pay 2 Win', which is a perversion of game design dictated by market forces, not a true genre. So I think part of the problem this designer is having is she's been too myopically limiting herself to only video games as an interactive form to draw inspiration from. Games exist in many forms. Board games in particular have a huge wealth of mechanics and ideas that video games have mostly left unexplored, and role playing/social games of late are no slouch either latel (just saw one that focuses on language and how it is formed and dies in an isolated community on Kickstarter, called Dialect). Shovel Knight source: http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-broke http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-...
- stcredzero 10y ago
  One of the game designers who did a workshop at The MADE videogame museum in Oakland advocated board game design as an exercise in "pure" game mechanics thinking.

cableshaft 10y ago

Board games have really exploded with how they experiment with different concepts and mechanics over the past fifteen years, and they've been rewarded with greater and greater success. Board game publishers actually encourage innovation from game designers (...to a certain extent. They also like safer bets when available too), much more so than video game publishers, and Kickstarter exists to fund the ideas that game publishers don't go for. Kickstarter exists for video games too, but board games are succeeding on Kickstarter at a much higher rate than video games lately, in no small part because video games are funding development, for a game that may take a lot longer to develop and be impossible to complete with those funds. Even the darling Shovel Knight burned through all of its Kickstarter money 5 months before release and they all went broke just to get the game out the door. But board games are usually funding production of a completed design that's already priced out so they know how much it's going to cost them. There are over a thousand new board games that came out this year at Essen alone, only one of several major board game trade shows. That's tons of opportunities for new mechanics and experiences. They're even getting deeper in their storytelling capabilities, as evidenced by the games Pandemic Legacy, Time Stories, and Above and Below. Board games are still defining new genres even (most recently the Legacy genre which is only 5 years old, and Deckbuilders which is only 8 years old), I can't think of any new genres in video games since Grand Theft Auto 3 came out and popularized sandbox games 15 years ago. That is, unless you count 'Free 2 Play, Pay 2 Win', which is a perversion of game design dictated by market forces, not a true genre. So I think part of the problem this designer is having is she's been too myopically limiting herself to only video games as an interactive form to draw inspiration from. Games exist in many forms. Board games in particular have a huge wealth of mechanics and ideas that video games have mostly left unexplored, and role playing/social games of late are no slouch either latel (just saw one that focuses on language and how it is formed and dies in an isolated community on Kickstarter, called Dialect). Shovel Knight source: http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-broke http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5974557/shovel-knight-sales-...

stcredzero 10y ago
One of the game designers who did a workshop at The MADE videogame museum in Oakland advocated board game design as an exercise in "pure" game mechanics thinking.